Tag: Videos

YouTube is no doubt one of the biggest video service on the internet today serving more than 2 billion videos a day. However, it’s home page is definitely not one of the best and lacks a lot of personalization.

However, starting today, YouTube is experimenting with a new homepage which adds some much needed features to your homepage. Here are some of the new features which are included in the new homepage.

Load much more – Watch older videos – all without leaving the homepage

Some of the interesting features include combined list of subscriptions, friend activity and recommendation videos which makes it easier to find and watch videos. In addition to that there is also more focus on channels you subscribe to, so that you do not miss any videos uploaded by your favorite folks.

In addition to that, you can also remove videos you are not interested in from your homepage. Also videos you have already watched will be grayed out so that you know that you have already seen it without watching it again.

How To Get New YouTube Homepage

YouTube’s new homepage is about enhancing your personal experience, so it is currently available for logged in users. To experience the new homepage, visit youtube.com and click on the button "Try a different homepage". This will take you to another page where you need to opt-in. Once you have done that you can start using the new YouTube homepage.

A few years ago when I left for the United States, I started teaching my mom to use the computer and use basic tools like the web browser and instant messenger so that she could email or chat with me.

However, since then there have been several times when either she or my dad had problems with the PC and had to call someone to fix it. Some of these problems were really small and could probably have been solved without any help, however, teaching it to them was quite difficult if not impossible.

I think that there might several other children who have gone through these experiences including many Googlers who have now launched a site called TeachParentsTech.org where they allow kids to teach their parents technology by sending basic how-to videos to them. It is not just limited to parents and can be used for any person who isn’t that technically savvy.

Right now Google has over 50 videos which teach people things as basic as copy & paste, sharing files online, sending emails, changing wallpapers and taking screenshots among other things. So the next time someone asks you about such things, you can just create a Care package and send it along to them so that they can easily learn to do things.

I just wished that they had done this few years ago so that I could send it to my parents . However, I seriously think that they don’t need any help now and can manage everything on their own.

Google Chrome OS is something Google is betting on to succeed when it comes out. They even want people to get a Chrome OS laptop for free so that they can test it and help them improve it further.

So what is so good about Google Chrome OS? Cloud computing and living in the web. To drive this point across Google created a video which shows how quickly you can get back your data and other things even if your laptop has a disaster.

Check out the video below to see how Google is driving the Chrome OS in the cloud point to users.

One of the major features of a smartphone platform cut, copy and paste has finally been revealed for Windows Phone 7. Long gone are the days of Windows Mobile 5.x, 6.x and 6.5 that included full copy and paste functionality, iOS launched without it and Windows Phone 7 has as well. However, it’s been discussed that the next update to WP7 includes copy and paste and here we have a video of it in working condition. It’s not very polished, and doesn’t look finger friendly at all. Hopefully this is the start and not the finished product.

Augmented Reality is the future of mobiles, gaming and television. It is both exciting and fascinating and there is tremendous development work going on to make use of the technology.

The folks behind http://www.soulbit7.com/ have come up with a new Augmented reality based game called Look-UP for the iOS. Look-UP is a classic UFO invasion game themed in the 21st century with a Augmented Reality twist. The game allows you to fight alien forces in your real surroundings.

Not sure what I am talking about? Take a look at the videos below of the game in action, one of them was shot in Times Square in NYC.

If you loved what you saw, you can go ahead and purchase the game for your iDevice from here for $1.99. Sadly, this is available only for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, iPod Touch and iPad support is not yet available.

A couple of months back, there were rumors suggesting that deep integration of Facebook and Skype was on the cards. Soon after, Skype introduced Facebook integration in its client. Now it appears that Facebook is also preparing to integrate Skype.

AllFacebook is reporting that a Facebook app developer has discovered the existence of code hinting at Skype integration. Apparently, Facebook is bucket testing this feature, which will be based on the Skype SDK. Tal Alter, the developer who was the first to notice this, wrote in his blog, “The object, which is simply called VideoChat, appears to have everything needed to introduce video chatting functionality.” It is expected that once launched, Skype users will be able to receive and initiate video calls directly from Facebook.

Jimmy Fallon, the late night talk show host and comedian is known to be a gadget freak. He often has Engadget editors on his show. However, this time around he got two very powerful gentlemen on the show; Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.

In the show Jimmy asks the Twitter co-founders on how the idea of Twitter came about and the introduction of the word "tweet", which they attributed to have been created by Twitter users.

Watch the video of Evan Williams and Biz Stone on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon below.

YouTube subscriptions basically allow users to subscribe to channels and users so that they can always stay updated on new videos from them. YouTube claims to be sending more than a billion subscription notification emails sent every week. 15 channels have more than one million subscribers, including the popular College Humor and Fail Blog channels.

YouTube has also announced a new subscription widget for video makers to embed in their website. This widget will allow users to subscribe to YouTube videos without having to visit YouTube itself. So are you subscribing to any YouTube channels? If not, check out the embedded video below to see how YouTube subscriptions work.

However, certain versions of PowerPoint 2010 grey out the option to insert videos and only allow you to insert videos from a file. The problem is that inserting videos from websites is not available in 64-bit versions of Office 2010 or PowerPoint 2010 due to it requiring a 64-bit Adobe Flash installation.

The same feature is available on a 32-bit installation. So if you are using a 64-bit version of Office or PowerPoint 2010 you will be unable to insert videos into your presentation from sites like YouTube.

Is there a workaround? Yes, there are couple of workarounds. First of all you could grab yourself a 64-bit version of Adobe Flash from Adobe Labs and install it to solve your problem. The 64-bit active-x for Internet Explorer worked for me. However, you must note that the 64-bit version of Adobe Flash is in beta stage and may result in frequent browser crashes, though I haven’t seen any yet.

TV sets equipped with Google TV will soon be available. One of the things which has everybody guessing is how Google plans leverage the power of Youtube to lure users to Google TV, or rather how online video will finally converge with network programming on your TV.

With Youtube Leanback, you can finally have a glimpse of the future. It is available for both, Youtube Users and Google TV users. You can also try it out on your browser at http://www.youtube.com/leanback

It has a nice interface which can easily be controlled with a TV remote. You can either search for videos or view your personalized feed of videos. It also allows you to view sections like “Best of Youtube”, Comedy, Entertainment, Film and Animation, Gaming, Music, News, Technology, Sports etc.

It also supports Ads now; so expect Google’s next quarter to be even better.